Went out for Thai food with a friend and her friend. My friend Ako is Japanese while her friend was African. About 2 weeks ago, I had requested to meet this African girl after seeing pics that Ako showed me. Intri gued by the notion of going to Africa someday, I wanted a native's perspective on what it's like there. True enough, her eyes lit up as she spoke of her home.
I encounter that so often here. Since everyone in Canada seems to be from someplace else, it is not difficult to get people talking. Just ask them where they are from and you'll instantly get people all excited. I am the same when talking about Malaysia.
So anywho, when I first met this girl, she struck me as being a bit standoff-ish and not so friendly. Throughout dinner, I had tried repeatedly to include her in out conversation. It was a bit frustrating at the beginning as she wouldn't respond very much. Fifteen minutes into diner, I was on the verge of concluding that I did not like this girl. Remember thinking in my head that I could either clam up myself, just sit through dinner and let that be the end of that. It wouldn't have been hard to do, actually. During the trip to India, I've somehow learned to be comfortable in silence.
Anywho, I kept trying to get her to open up and at the end she did. She is funny and quite friendly once she is a bit more comfortable. So my point boys and girls is that we should always give people the benefit of the doubt.
This felt like one of those moments in the Livingstone (or whatever it was) books where at every page you make a decision that would lead to a different page and so on. Had I chosen the path of not being friendly, things would have turned out very different. Instead I now consider her a new friend that I wouldn't mind hanging out with.
Intriguing isn't it? The way we have actual control over what happens?
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